Posture correcting shirts have existed and have been used for several years, the primary goal being to stimulate the body's joints and muscles into better alignment and posture (a slight S-shape of the spine being the gold standard). The importance of having good posture is a well-known and accepted idea among health professionals and non-experts in the field. Good posture helps for both maintaining regular health (back, shoulder, neck pain, etc.) and improving athletic performance, as poor posture during dynamic activities results in inefficient biomechanics and body movement. Indeed, a disruption at any point during the kinetic chain of movement can affect downstream functions as well. Poor posture in the upper body is typically categorized by ‘shoulders rolled forward’, ‘a forward curvature in the thoracic spine’, and/or a ‘left/right lean of the thoracic spine’. In addition, the inefficient body movement created by poor posture does not allow for full utilization of muscular range of motion and strength and can cause repetitive injury over time.
Typical recovery methods for those suffering from back, neck, and other pain include going to a chiropractor or physical therapy or to seek orthopedic surgeon evaluation. Such medical procedures to correct poor posture involve injections, medications, rehabilitation, and possible surgical correction. As many people cannot afford the time or cost of extensive and costly chiropractor treatments (either short term or long-term treatments), there exists a need in the market for affordable methods and systems to correct and maintain the posture of individuals in attempt to provide:                a) correct functional anatomy;        b) improved muscle efficiency;        c) improved pain relief and minimal pain to users; and        d) creation of good habits so that individuals do not develop poor-posture related pain to begin with.        
The first attempts using a wearable garment to refine biomechanical factors that influence posture and kinesthetic states was originated in the 1970's within the Soviet space program, in order to counteract the effects of long-term weightlessness. This device, known as the Adeli suit, is used to treat pediatric patients with postural disabilities due to neurological conditions that lead to brain damage or spinal cord injury. Its design is relatively simple, involving elastic connections between the primary joints, specifically to target positions of antagonistic muscle pairs. However, there are still many other of ways and degrees to which the body can become imbalanced due to disruptions in the kinetic chain of muscle activation.
Muscles devoted substantially to the concepts of balance and posture are sometimes referred to as gravity and antigravity muscles; they are the tools that provide upright organisms with the ability to maintain the center-of-gravity (COG) within a stable base of support. Upright balance is attained when a vertical line follows from the center-of-gravity, directly down through this base of support. Any imbalance will cause compensatory abnormalities which will affect alignment within the body's whole musculoskeletal system. Optimized postural alignment is crucial in counteracting the constant downward gravitational forces opposing the body. When the upright force of musculoskeletal architecture and the downward force of gravity are balanced, muscles are able to function with the least amount of work, i.e. peak efficiency.
When the upright body holds better posture, smaller amounts of stress and strain are placed on the muscles, ligaments and bones thereby enhancing their efficiency and increasing bone density and muscle mass in the long term. Opposing the force of gravity, the so called antigravity muscles assist to maintain an upright, balanced posture. For the lower body, these muscles consist of namely the soleus muscles, the extensors of the leg, the gluteus maximus, the quadriceps femoris. For the upper body and the muscles of the back, these muscles include the trapezius, the rhomboids, and several smaller groups around the shoulder such as the teres minor and subscapularis. Additionally, the cervico-occipital muscle groups maintain the head in an erect position, thereby preventing it from rolling forward. These muscle groups simultaneously play an important role in the proprioception process, with proprioceptors in the dermal surface sending key information about pressure in the feet to the antigravity muscles through the nervous system. Any weakening of these muscles combined with the continuously working gravitational forces leads to poor postural stability, which affects muscle function. If left untreated, this ultimately leads to degeneration of joints and deformities such as a structural collapse in the foot. Postural alignment is essential to maintain normal length-tension relationships of the muscles especially during dynamic posture, determining the ease with which the body segments align themselves throughout movement. Any disruptions to this alignment throws the kinetic chain of the body off balance, making the person susceptible to a host of injuries. Understanding our limitations at controlling the effect gravitational forces have on the muscles and structure should form the basis of treatment programs.
As one treatment option, posture shirts and girdles were created to fill the burgeoning need of postural correction. Posture shirts and girdles typically contain vertical straps that do not mimic natural anatomical movement. These vertical straps take the wrong approach to correcting a wearer's posture, namely that the straps do not focus on proprioceptive correction to achieve natural postural alignment but instead focus on force. This force creates an unnatural alignment that may push a wearer's shoulders backwards in an outward appearance of better posture but in reality, doesn't achieve much short term or long-term success. Natural posture alignment in the thoracic spine is achieved when posterior muscle groups (i.e. trapezius, rhomboids, latissimus dorsi) and anterior muscle groups (serratus anterior, etc.) are both exerting the same amount of force, thus allowing the body to be balanced. Therefore, garments created in this space targeted this natural (proprioceptive) balancing; however, these garments were not able to fully achieve this goal due to several limitations, including the one listed above.
Further to this idea, the vertical straps that these companies utilize end at the bottom of the buttocks, contributing to the unnatural pull that forces the shoulders back into an improper and unnatural position that does not mimic natural anatomical movement. The corresponding picture would be someone grabbing the bottom of one's shirt from the back and pulling it downwards and tucking it underneath one's glutes; this would certainly force one's shoulders back and posture to be straightened but it would also align the posture in the incorrect form and prove to be extremely uncomfortable. For instance, one shirt of this kind was made from a cotton body with elastic straps that were attached at the front of each shoulder, ran over the back parallel to the spine, and connected at the bottom seam. That same shirt was not only anatomically incorrect, it was also extremely tight (made from a Lycra Spandex material), thus not breathable and uncomfortable. The construction method required also led to these shirts needing to be full-length, which can get hot and sweaty.
Not only does Lycra Spandex material require an extremely tight wear from the user, it's also unsightly and unfashionable and does not translate well to commercial use, since customers are not inclined to wear the garment as their only layer. By wearing an additional layer on top of the Lycra Spandex to cover the unsightly artificial material layer of the posture correction garment, the breathability issue is compounded with an additional layer of tightness. Due to this combination, individuals typically stop wearing Lycra Spandex made posture shirts, thus sabotaging the process of building good habits in postural alignment. All of these issues compound to discourage patient wear and compliance since each factor adds an additional negative feature.
One therapeutic method for correcting posture involves the body's proprioceptive sense. An organism uses proprioception to maintain an internal model of its body's orientation in space, a sort of mental avatar representing the mind's best guess as to how its physical limbs are moving. When the primary motor cortex signals the muscles to fire, it also emits an efference signal, also known as a corollary discharge. This second signal has been hypothesized to suppress the subsequent firing of sensory cortex networks when they are inevitably stimulated by the aforementioned motor movement. Therapeutically applied proprioception can be explained by intensifying and subsequently normalizing the afferent proprioceptive mobility-controlling input.
Rather than utilizing vertical straps, one form of the proprioceptive correction technique is the utilization of horizontal straps that contract the rhomboids and the upper trapezius in a horizontal motion that moves the scapula towards the spine and is thus anatomically correct. This natural postural correction is effective because it physically (through the anatomically correct means) corrects a wearer's posture and then passively influences the posture after it is corrected. This is achieved due to the natural tension that the horizontal straps exerts on the wearer, which makes it so that the wearer wants to be in postural correct form without the force of a vertical strap constantly pulling over the shoulder and down to the buttocks region.
Additional systems include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,202,327, 4,957,103, 5,158,531, 5,451,200, 5,599,286, 5,718,670, 6,102,879, 6,213,922, 6,440,094, 6,676,617, 6,936,021, 7,134,969, 7,153,246, 7,395,557, 7,662,121, 7,871,388, 8,047,893, 8,083,693, 8,308,670, 8,516,614, 8,556,840, 8,795,213, 8,795,215, 8,887,315, 8,905,956, 8,910,317, 8,932,236, 9,009,863, 9,167,854, 9,168,167, 9,226,534, 9,439,459, 9,445,932, 9,456,919, 9,504,280, 9,883,703, 9,931,236, US20040107479, US20050197607, US20060000478A1, US20080134409A1, US20090062704, US20100192274A1, US20120078149, US20120174282, US20130047313, US20130053744, US20130090521, US20130103079, US20140058307, US20140100501, US20140221893 and US20150040286A1.
However, none of the prior art references provide a proprioceptive design that efficiently correctly a wearer's postures. There exists a need for a more comfortable and proprioceptive woven fabric posture re-balance garment that corrects a wearer's posture using anatomically correct movement that allows for shoulder mobility, is breathable and aesthetically pleasing to promote patient compliance, and is not so tight as to be hot and uncomfortable to wear.
Accordingly, the present invention is a device directed to solving all of these problems.